Stuart Bone's Blog - Posts Tagged "character"

A friend of mine has just finished reading Driven to Distraction. He told me he kept hearing my voice as he read it. I guess that's not surprising as it is written in the first person and he does know my sense of humour.

The voice of a character is very important to me. When I can hear them talking in my head, I know I've got them right.

I will detail physical descriptions of characters because, obviously, the reader has to be able to picture them; but for me the character often remains faceless. I wish I could see them in that level of detail but it's usually just a human form in my mind, but I always hear the sound and tone in their voices and I know how they think and how they feel.

Sometimes I will end up rewriting a scene or chapter or even take the book in a different direction; purely because I realise the fully-formed character wouldn't do what I planned for them to do.

I realise that last paragraph sounds a little disturbing. I don't mean characters are starting to talk to me and take over my life. They're not real...although I have felt quite sad and guilty when I've killed one off. I've also sometimes cringed at the things some of them say, even though I'm the one typing the words!

For those of you that have already met Shauna, the courier in Driven to Distraction, you'll understand what I mean.

I've just finished writing an emotionally-charged scene; the fallout from a revealed secret involving three characters. There was a lot of upset and anger and some terrible things said. I spent about half an hour writing it continuously (editing will come later) and it's surprising how drained I now feel. It's not like I felt the actual emotions of the characters (thank goodness as one character was so angry he ripped a coffeemaker out of the wall and threw it across the kitchen. By the time the book comes out I may have changed that to another kitchen appliance) but I suppose I was a witness to the scene and I guess that would affect anyone.

I touched on characters taking over in a previous blog but yesterday I realised why these blog posts sometimes take me a long time to do. It's because I'm writing as me. Actors often mention about being shy but are able to get up on stage each night because they can hide behind the character. It's the same sort of thing for me as a writer. In my novels, when a character speaks, it's them talking, not me and they can say the most outrageous things or voice opinions that I don't agree with. That does work the other way too and some characters can share my views and opinions but in my blog there is no hiding and I'm always aware of that when writing it.

There are blogs and Facebook pages that have been set up as being written by a character and that's a very tempting thing to do. I thought about what a blog written by Shauna, the courier from Driven to Distraction, would be like. She doesn't care what she says or what people think of her and that's very liberating for me, as a writer. Her blog would be outrageous but funny, because she's a fictional character. If a real person shared her opinions and her somewhat colourful expressions and language it would no longer be funny.

It's an idea for the future. Shauna is definitely my favourite character in Driven to Distraction but I don't feel she's a protagonist for a novel. However, if she proves popular perhaps she could write her own blog one day, or review my future novels...actually that might not be such a good idea. I hate to think what she'd say about them.